[singing] San Fran­cisco, San Fran­cisco … not “San Fran”, no, appar­ently not! I didn’t know that, I would’ve said “San Fran”, but you’d go, “No, we don’t like ‘San Fran’, fuck it!” Or what’s the other one you don’t like? Oh, “Frisco”! You don’t like that either. [audi­ence hisses] And you’re a city of snakes, I see! Hsss! …So you just call it [rolling eyes] “The City”. Oh, right, “The City”. And Oakland’s just a col­lec­tion of houses, is it?

Eddie Izzard

I think the only thing we proved in our whistle stop tour of “The City” is that you can’t get a grip on any sig­ni­fic­antly large place if you are jet-lagged and have only 24 hours.  We did, how­ever, give it our best shot.  Land­ing in San Fran­cisco I was expect­ing the US cus­toms to seize me on sight.  Not that I have done any­thing, but I read enough on the news and blogs about TSA night­mares (such as arrest­ing a guy for hav­ing a Mac Book Air — “That’s not a laptop!”) to expect the worst.  In the end of course they just waved me through.  I was almost incensed!

The ride into the city was per­formed on auto pilot, but I was awake enough to be amazed by the San­Fran archi­tec­ture, which is very eclectic.  Flat roofed Mex­ican style houses blot the land­scape and then give way to the stand­ard Amer­ican urge to build everything big­ger.  Large, tall, just like in the movies were the three things that ran through my mind.

A short walk later we were at the hostel.  It is 2:30pm US time.  God knows what time it is in Lon­don.  Sleep took us and we wandered out of space and time so that each passing second was as like a life­time on the Earth.

6am.

We wake.  Food is needed, but first secur­ity.  Strug­gling to pack our kit in the man­dat­ory Pac­Safe wire mesh pro­tect­ors was not fun.  Clearly some­thing you need to prac­tice.  Well, we have plenty of time for that.  Neither Francesca or I even sug­ges­ted leav­ing the packs “unmeshed”.  It was not that the hostel was that dodgy but rather I believe it was we both could hear Arabella’s voice in our heads warn­ing us with the dire arch­ing tone of the older sister.

Food was best described as shit.  I know the US love their pan­cakes, but to my Eng­lish pal­let it tasted like eat­ing soft foam pack­ing topped with sugar.  Still, it filled a hole.  It would have done equally well filling a mattress.

We ven­tured out into “The City” and at first glance I was under­whelmed to say the least.

Our Hostel

San Fran­cisco has that high sided build­ing feel that you get in all US cit­ies and which Lon­don rarely achieves, but it also has a very vis­ible divide between those who have and have not.  Beg­gars are every­where and in all guises.  Simply look­ing like you don’t know where you are, squint­ing at sign­posts for example, will have them swarm­ing over you in packs all vying for the largest tip you can muster.  I would like to say that I was able to res­ist, but one such likely fel­low, a “vet­eran” he claimed — although of what war I couldn’t say; pos­sibly the civil war, collared us and was very help­full in point­ing out the way, pla­cing a good map in my hand, smil­ing and laugh­ing about our jour­ney from Lon­don and char­ging me a fiver.  I hope the cash went some way to help­ing him buy a pair of trousers.

We vis­ited the cam­era shop then STA travel (the guy in STA was a god-send and booked all our seats for the next 4 flights) and then headed onto the nearest cable­car and uptown towards Fisherman’s Wharf.  This was more like it.  The cable­car holds some sort of mys­tic charm that I couldn’t quite put my fin­ger on, but was def­in­itely affected by. Per­haps it was the banter of the driver, which was cool as mus­tard and obvi­ously the mus­ings of someone who has been driven mad by his job, or per­haps it is the quaint wooden feel and the low tech approach?

Nev­er­the­less I really enjoyed my jour­ney on what was an abso­lute 100 year old deathtrap and had me hanging on for dear life.  Fisherman’s Wharf is nice if a little touristy.  We wanted to buy some food from the mar­ket, crab being the spe­ci­al­ity of the area, but on passing the very first res­taur­ant my stom­ach grabbed hold of my legs and made me keel hard right.  I didn’t real­ise how hungry I was until we had pol­ished off two bas­kets of bread as we waited.  Cecsa did the math.  Apart from the mat­tress filling earlier we had not eaten for 24 hours.  When they placed down the crab in front of me I just knew that I was going to shuck that little fucker for every single morsel of flesh I could get to.  Cesca liked hers too.

Sated we star­ted to enjoy ourselves and booked onto the man­dat­ory cruise across the bay, under the bridge and around Alc­a­t­raz.  Mark Twain once noted that the cold­est winter he ever exper­i­enced was a sum­mer in San Fran­cisco.  How right he was.  It was bloody nippy, but we had a fant­astic time.  The com­ment­ary was all pre-recorded, which in Eng­land would have spelled dis­aster, but here in the land of Hol­ly­wood even dodgy little ferry jour­neys get the proper treat­ment.  It was all very well done.  The bridge was large and impos­ing, but not as large as I imagined.

Alc­a­t­raz was far most inter­est­ing and could only ima­gine how being an inmate on that island must have felt.  The main­land is so close, it would be mad­den­ing.  Everything you would want, free­dom, people, con­spicu­ous con­sump­tion — IE the Amer­ican Dream, would have been just a short swim away.  Past the machine guns, sharks and freez­ing cold waters.  I wouldn’t have liked it much for sure, but the com­ment­ary sug­ges­ted that, since the island held the worst of the worst, in fact being incar­cer­ated on Alc­a­t­raz was some­what of a badge of hon­our for the inmates.  Some­thing to brag about later on when com­par­ing scars.

And so ended San Fran­cisco.  We headed back into town via a dif­fer­ent route and then col­lec­ted our bags and made our way back to the air­port.  Again I was waved through cus­toms with barely a glance.  I was almost look­ing for­wards to the exper­i­ence of being searched, which goes to show how tired I was, but hey maybe next time?

The Qantas plane was much nicer than the cramped BA one (at least in our class) and we soon began the 14 hour trot towards our next leg of this adven­ture!  To Aus­tralia and beyond!

Tune in next time, same bat place, same bat channel.

Regards,

Basho

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